


A Very Bitter Reunion

by Nitrobot



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Bashing, F/M, Heartbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 01:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4588284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...from a very bitter writer.<br/>When Optimus Prime finally reunites with his beloved, all he finds is a monster in her place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Bitter Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> Safe to say I was very... disappointed (yet not really surprised) when Elita One finally made a comic appearance and, like many other things, IDW's writers managed to completely fuck her up in just one panel.  
> So here's Optimus Prime reacting to his wife being utterly butchered on page.

Optimus told his team to stay behind for at least a few klicks; guarding the main entrance was their task, but they all knew it was to really give the Prime some well earned privacy. If their intel was correct... Elita One was behind those doors. Either as a prisoner or guard or... well, the new warlord of femmes _was_ reported to have pink armour. 

Optimus searched his spark for any hint that hers was glowing beyond the barricade, any faint pings or pulses that would tell him she was alive. There was none... except a sudden low thrumming in the ambiance of his chamber. The first tendrils of unease were curling out, threatening to root him to the ground if he didn't start moving.

He readied a blaster and vented deeply, before kicking out against the door and turning it into splinters barely hanging off its frame in a desperate instant.

At the very end of the chamber, someone was waiting for him in deceptively rosy armour glowing red and grimy in the flickering light of hanging plasma candles. Other than perhaps a vorn-old corpse and the throne she lounged on, she was the most hideous thing he'd ever seen.

She let him take some steps forward, his blue optics straining to see in the flickering light, before addressing him with a swirl of a grossly elaborate goblet in her servo. "You're a few centuries late for our anniversary, Optimus." 

Primus, even her voice was some cruel parody of Elita's, high pitched and painful to hear like a dying cirkitten's mewling. This might have been some torturous trick by Megatron if Optimus didn't feel the thrumming in his chamber growing stronger. 

"Who are you?" It was hard to keep disgust out of his tone, but the walking farce in front of him didn't seem to notice it as she took a gulp of her drink.

"Are your optics fading out again?" They weren't, as he could clearly see the glowing pink stains around her mouth and denta, and duller ones still blending into her chest plating. The marks of a battle veteran too lazy or proud to clean her armour of war spoils. "I'm your sparkmate, Optimus. I'm Elita." She spoke mockingly, as if even a newspark could have known such an obvious thing. Her goblet disappeared somewhere over her shoulder in an arc of splattered energon and a clatter somewhere below them. She started uncurling, like some sentient weed opening up to the sun, and descended from her throne. Her heels clicked on the floor in time with the damned thrums in Optimus' spark, tempting him to tear his chest open and end the synchronised torment himself.

"You're still as bad at stealth missions as you were during that training exercise in Kolkular," she observed, oblivious to the loaded barrel aimed warily in the way of her stride. "You're lucky I was generous enough to dismiss all my guards for now. It's the only reason you and your friends are still alive."

Optimus himself was still looking for reasons to not send her back to the Pit. He was sure Primus wouldn't miss her much and Unicron would welcome her with open servos. "What happened to you?" he asked, disbelief dampening his voice. 

She paused, frowned, looked away before sneering at him in rehearsed contempt.

"What happened to _everyone_ , Optimus? The _war_ happened. And _you_ know better than anyone that it's kill or be killed." The accusation lay thick on her glossa, coating her words like gunpowder. Everyone blamed him for the war eventually, but this was more than just bitterness bleeding through. Whatever it was that twisted her into this... beast, she was convinced that it was his fault.

He'd only just gotten over the guilt of losing her in the first place.

"Unlike the rest of you wretches, I _evolved_ , Optimus," she still preached, approaching him with wild optics and sharp denta slick with greed and lies. "I got stronger, better than anyone else in this fragging galaxy. I don't _need_ an army of Autobots to make bots scared of me... and I like it."

A morbid curiosity at what might come next was all that stopped Optimus from striking her when she came within range of his servos, anything to banish the Sharkticon grin from her scarred faceplate. "It won't take long for you to join me," she told him with a hopeful glare, stopping just short of standing on his peds. "You're already half way there by the looks of it."

Optimus took in a heavy vent of air, and instantly regretted it when nothing but acrid smoke filled his systems. "You are not the femme I fell in love with," he declared through gritted denta, closing his digits together in barely contained fists.

She cocked her helm, raising an eyeridge, before laughing at him. It was as if something was being strangled in her throat. "Isn't that a good thing? The one you _loved_ was pathetic, a weakling-" She hadn't prepared herself for a hand closing around her neck, lifting her high off the ground and crushing her cables around her poisoned vocaliser.

Optimus practically felt grease oozing out of her between his digits as the thrumming threatened to overwhelm his chamber, constricting his spark in its toxic cloud. "Silence yourself before I do it for you, demon."

She looked down at his hand more out of curiosity than shock, not so much clawing at his grip rather than holding it, measuring his strength. When her optics lifted back up, they beheld a smirk drooling energon. "Already half way there, Optimus..." she spluttered through edges of static, almost daring him to squeeze just a little harder. 

He wouldn't. He was above this petty creature of cruelty, throwing her back and turning before he could see her skidding to a stop against the foot of her throne. 

"Pray that I never see you again," he snarled over his shoulder, shifting his blaster away before the heat of the rounds melted through the metal of his servo. 

The thrumming faded to an unpleasant thud just as he reached the door, before flaring from the core of his spark again, sudden enough to make him double over.

Or maybe that was the blade jutting through his midsection, spreading a magenta mosaic between the silver seams and dripping a rhythm on the floor.

"I'm not really one for praying nowadays, so how about you just tell Primus yourself?" the new warlord said, not far off from cackling like some old Praxian pantomime villain. Optimus couldn't dwell too much on it with his main fuel lines all but sliced open and his HUD flooding with warnings. He could barely see his own wound, relying on a hand to feel for where the energon was slickest and his abdomen lanced through with pain. Fueled by an emergency rush of adrenaline, his processor launched into an instant scan of the situation. It wasn't an immediately lethal injury- no vital organ components damaged, at least. His backstrut buckled suddenly under a shove against his back, forcing him to his bloodied knees. She could have aimed anywhere on his protoform for a more dangerous slice, even going through his spinal column, yet she deliberately curved the blade away from it. She was out to humiliate him- his death would just be a bonus. 

Just over the agony of the wound was the irregular crescendo of his spark, and the fading click of heels on the floor. With his helm already bowed he cracked open his optics, seeing her still behind him with lips moving. He couldn't hear whatever she said, some sort of insult or insightful prediction of his fate, as he struggled to stay upright. If he removed the sword, his tanks would empty in the space of klicks. His own blade jutted out of his servo almost reflexively, reflecting his extruciated expression and the energon dribbling out of his mouth. 

He wasn't about to crawl away with tattered pride to leave her extermination to someone else.

Optimus forced the pain aside and pushed himself to his peds, wobbling towards her with a determination that barely masked grief. One servo held his wound while the other went behind his back, hiding his blade from view.

"Elita... if you're still in there somewhere..." His words bubbled up faintly, catching the imposter's attention with a surprise soon replaced with a pitying look one might give to a lost turbofox. One step for him was five for her.

"Always a gentlemech, Optimus, bringing my sword back to me," she cooed with a taunting pout, grabbing onto the hilt of her blade and slowly pulling it out of him.

She was so enamored with the sight of his wound gushing out that she didn't see the shadow of his sword held aloft above her, with all the withering strength Optimus had left.

"I know you'll forgive me for this."

She glanced up at him for a nanoklick, only noticing the sword when it cleaved right through her faceplate, opening up her processor in a mess of circuit boards soaked with energon and coolant. Her last expression was two halves of a screech that never had a chance to sound, suitably grim and ugly.

She fell gracelessly to her side, taking his sword down with her and losing grip of her own still jutting out of him. His wife was finally at peace, and the monster wearing her name was gone.

The other Autobots found him kneeling in all her bleeding energon, frame caked and sticky with whatever wasn't on the floor. A field medic saw to his abdomen, slowly extracting the rest of the blade and sealing the broken fuel lines and plating back together. He spoke to neither soldier nor scout until the area was searched and it was time to go. He told them to leave the body where it was, throwing one last look of disgust at it before ridding himself of its memory.

The ghostly thrumming was gone forever.


End file.
